


Can We Fill the Space

by EllieMurasaki



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Community: samdeanexchange, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-20
Updated: 2010-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Oh, it feels a little bit too right, so I know it must be wrong; I wanna take you home tonight, but I'm trying to be strong—</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Can We Fill the Space

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lavendergaia](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=lavendergaia).



> Title and summary from "Walk Over Me" by Blondie ('cause you're a little bit too nice, I look a little bit like hell, 'cause I'm a little overtired and I'm a little overwhelmed).

At the beginning of everything, there was nothing.

But this isn't the beginning.

There is darkness where there was vivid color, silence where there was sound, nothing by which to define 'up' or 'north' or 'a moment ago', and a clear impression that 'is' is not all there is, that there was 'was' and there will be 'will be'. That though there is nothing, there was sound and sight and direction and time, and maybe there will be again.

* * *

  
On the list of shit Dean never thought he'd think: _give me back the dreams reenacting memories from hell_. Because at least in hell he knew Sam was safe. Now he has four types of dream: the ones where he's standing in Bobby's basement staring at the door he's just slammed and locked behind Sam, the ones where he's watching through a glass wall as nameless demons slice Sam to ribbons, the ones where it's Dean with instruments in hand, and the ones that show anything else. The last set is...rare.

* * *

  
There is self and not-self. There is here and not-here.

From somewhere in the not-here, there is a call.

* * *

  
Dean shoves the rings back in the pocket of Sam's jeans and rolls the jeans back up and stuffs them back in Sam's bag with the rest of the shit Dean should have gotten rid of months ago. The bag goes back in the box that came out of the Impala when Dean got an apartment, the weapons box goes back in the closet, and Dean gives serious thought to shoving the bed in front of the closet door. Instead he sprawls across it and stares at the ceiling, tuning out all thoughts and sensations the way he mastered about two years in, before Alastair, and soon enough he is staring at the goddamned door of that godforsaken cage he locked Sam into.

But.

But his mind is rendering the cage as Bobby's panic room. Bobby's panic room has a little window in the door. Dean can't open the door, promised Sam he wouldn't, but opening the window can't hurt, can it?

The creak of the hinge is very loud.

The bars are set just widely enough that Dean and Sam can stand nose to nose, grip each other's hands, breathe the same air. It's paradise. Sam's grinning wide and bright, his eyes shining, and Dean's crying and can't work up enough pride to care.

* * *

  
There is self and not-self and other-self.

Other-self is hurting. Other-self is alone.

There is here and not-here. Self is here. Other-self is not-here.

Between here and not-here is a barrier. Permeable but not passable.

* * *

  
Dean learned long ago to hold on to what he's got and never to try for more. Trying for more just means he loses what he's got. And Sam always leaves him, especially when he's just given Sam something to think about. So there's a few things Dean's never told Sam, not even when Sam was about to leave for good anyway, not even when one of them was about to head off to an afterlife where the best remaining possibility was that the other wouldn't follow.

So when Sam pushes forward that last half inch and presses his lips to Dean's, it's confirmation that this is all a product of Dean's imagination, not an actual connection with the real Sam at all. It's a heartbreaking realization, but it doesn't keep Dean from seeing how dream-Sam's wide green eyes slide from nervous to devastated when Dean doesn't respond, or from tightening his grip when Sam tries to pull away. Dean maneuvers their hands to Sam's side of the bars and catches Sam's earlobe between two fingers and tugs till Sam's looking at him again. "Sammy," Dean says, and keeps pulling until Sam gets the hint to go back to the kissing. Might as well enjoy the fantasy while he's got it.

* * *

  
Sammy. He's Sammy. He's Sammy.

* * *

  
Oh fuck this door-closed shit. It's just a dream.

Sam bursts out of the room the moment Dean throws back the bolt, and then Dean's back is to the wall and Sam's yanking Dean's shirts off and fumbling at Dean's jeans like he's forgotten how to work a button. Dean pops several buttons off Sam's shirt getting it loose enough to come off, breaks the zipper on Sam's jeans, and he suspects none of the shoes survive either but there's skin on skin and he can't be bothered to let go of Sam long enough to get a hand around a cock (his, Sam's, whatever) and _oh_.

"Love you, Sammy," Dean whispers in the moment before everything blurs back to waking.

* * *

  
So the barrier can be cracked open from the other side. Good to know.

Cracks can be widened.

* * *

  
Dean keeps trying to get the dreamscape to shift from Bobby's basement, where he keeps being half convinced Bobby will appear any moment to either shout at them or fill their bare asses with buckshot, to a motel room, where there are beds. (Never his apartment, despite the larger and comfier bed. The thought of Sam is antithetical to the thought of the apartment.) It keeps not working.

* * *

  
_Out_. Dirt and grass and shaped stones below him. Above him only sky.

Someone ventures too close. That someone's shell collapses, her self fleeing through one of the living-unliving bridges to heaven. The shell's face is damaged. He pictures the other-self running like that, green eyes replaced by a bloody ruin, and can't bear the thought.

So. A body. He needs one.

There are familiar-feeling bits scattered in the dirt.

* * *

  
Dean gets up and caffeined and fed and heads off to the garage. Shooting neither the radio nor everybody in the garage who _likes_ the fucking songs that go _there are holes in the floor of heaven_ and _your memory's like a ghost and my heart is its host_ is surprisingly difficult considering all Dean's guns are in the box in the closet of the apartment.

* * *

  
He's starting to get the hang of working an actual physical body—he likes it, he decides, the feel of cloth on skin alone is incredible—when three others arrive. There's two selves in each body, one firmly attached and one clinging to control via scraps of power that hums the same note as that with which he pieced together this shell. He listens to their delight and gratitude that he's freed himself, their apologies for being unable to free him sooner, their insistence that they and their comrades have continued to follow his last orders even after the Winchesters locked him away.

One of those comrades, one says, is keeping an eye on Winchester and his slut and their brat and is ready to move at their lord's order. The one speaking doesn't know where, though, and he twists his power just enough to convey the message that she's to check in with the one watching Winchester and return with that information; if these three are right that Winchester (Winchesters?) separated him from the other-self, then Winchester will face a reckoning.

He sends the second one to spread the news that everyone is to stand the fuck down while he reassesses the situation. The third doesn't seem to have any remaining usefulness.

He reclaims his power.

Both souls in that body run like hell for the safety of heaven.

Now to figure out what in the name of all that is holy and damned is going _on_ here. Not least of which, why he's being called Lucifer.

All things considered, he prefers the other-self's name for him. Sammy.

* * *

  
Dean heads to Lisa's for dinner. It's Ben's turn to cook.

Dean remembers being Ben's age, making dinner for a decade-pre-growth-spurt Sam. It hurts. It hurts so fucking much.

* * *

  
He goes to the location he's given for Winchester and finds his other-self.

Winchester. The one who locked him in the empty place. His other-self. Winchesters, two of them. His other-self, and him.

Tearing them apart. Walling them off. That was a deliberate decision.

The Winchesters did this. He, they, _chose_ this.

He doesn't understand.

* * *

  
Lisa kisses him. It doesn't touch the emptiness inside. It hadn't the last few times either. Dean pushes her away, gently, because what she's angling for is going to end up with the score Lisa multiple orgasms and Dean zero, just like last time, and if that's what she wants then he's sure she can get it single-player.

Dean doesn't want to go back to his apartment, though, so he takes advantage of his standing invitation to crash in Lisa's guest room. Sleep's a long time coming. When it finally shows, the scene is Lisa's front yard. Sam's standing under the broken streetlight, staring at the house and ignoring Dean. Putting considerable effort into ignoring Dean, in fact. It's like kissing a statue. Except judging by Pygmalion, a statue might be more responsive.

* * *

  
"Why?" he asks, when he concludes he can't solve this complicated contradictory conundrum without more information than he has. His voice rasps. Come to think, he's never used it.

"Why what?"

"Why...this." He waves a hand around, meaning tearing him loose from his other-self and from, literally, everything he'd ever known. Meaning his other-self tangling up with—he can't summon animosity against someone whom he's seen soothing the pain his other-self has been feeling, but there's no positive meaning to the only thing he has to call her. "Why everything."

A shrug. "I promised."

He nods. "If this is what you want." He turns away, almost takes a step before he looks back. "Is this really what you want?"

He hasn't finished saying that when he has an armful of warm living flesh, babbling denials and insisting he's only here because it's what Sam wanted.

In other words, they're both idiots.

He steers them over to the home on wheels in the driveway; they tumble into the front seat and he shoves himself over to shotgun and the gas pedal is slammed to the floor. Almost as soon as they hit a straightaway outside of town, he leans over, braces himself on the seat, realizes that takes both his hands, figures out how to get a zipper open with his teeth. The car veers to the side of the road, and he pulls back enough to say, "You stop, I stop." They need to keep moving. It's important.

"Go get blown by a goat," is the retort, but the car gets back on the road.

"What fun would that be?" he wonders, then goes back to getting his other-self's cock out where he can play with it. The angle really fucking sucks, but he can lick up and down, reveling in the taste of it. The physicality of the act, the way his other-self is cooperating, those let him knot his power through them both until the bond between them is in full force. Connection the way he wants can't be compelled or coerced. When he starts to feel a phantom tongue running the length of his own cock, he knows it's worked.

"Fuck, Sammy." The car comes to a stop and he doesn't protest. Then there's a wrestling match that ends with both their jeans around their ankles; he's pretty sure he won, because he's nibbling at his other-self's neck while his other-self is flat on his back in the dirt. He can feel fingers working to stretch his ass open while he does exactly that to his other-self, while both his hands hold down both his other-self's. There's a flare of power with no direction or purpose—his other-self is clearly new at this—and it overloads his senses for a moment, but when auditory processing comes back he realizes he's being called a bitch for freezing up and he slides his cock home, thrusts a couple times, and the feedback loop whites them out.

* * *

  
It's only when the sun rises, when they're in the back of the car resting after round three, that Dean realizes this wasn't a dream. Not a lot he can do about it, though, everything he owns except a single gun with a store-bought clip is in the apartment closet, and also Sam outweighs him.

"Why'd you come back?" Dean asks.

"Didn't you want me to?" Sam answers. Dean can feel how afraid Sam is at the idea of the answer being no, which scares Dean because he can also see how Sam doesn't want him to take Sam's desires into consideration at the moment.

"How did you?" Dean presses, rather than engaging that. "How did you without letting Lucifer out."

Sam laughs. "Funny thing. I met a few people think I _am_ Lucifer."

Dean starts rewinding and replaying every interaction with this Sam in his mind, starting with tonight at the streetlight, and jams to a halt at the point in last night's sex where he can feel three of Sam's hands on him. Then fast-forwards to the bit where they skipped the lube and it didn't hurt.

"I won't let anything hurt you," Sam says, as though he's reading Dean's mind, which is definitely a possibility. "Especially not me."

"Who are you?" Dean finally asks. He knows the answer, though. He must, because if the possibilities included anything but 'Sam' he wouldn't still be lying here.

"I don't know," Sam whispers. "I'm yours and you're mine and I don't know either of us."

"You're Sam," Dean says, sliding a hand up Sam's arm and down his back. "You're Sam and I'm Dean and we'll figure the rest out when we get there."

The hell of it is, Dean really thinks they will.


End file.
